The guard came out of the hotel then, started briskly across the street. Rudy stalled a few seconds longer, and then smoothly started the motor and rounded the corner. In little more than a minute after the guard had entered the bank, Rudy was parking in front of it.
He and Jackson got out of the car on opposite sides, the boy lingering a step or so behind him. Crossing the walk, their briefcases turned to display the official stamp on them,Rudy gave a curtly pleasant nod to the storekeeper and received a vacant stare in return. Leaning on his broom, the man continued to stare as Rudy rapped on the bank door.
The kid was panting heavily, crowding on Rudy's heels. The gangster called, "Hey, Wingate! Hurry it up," and then turned a flat, steady gaze on the storekeeper. "Yes?" he said. "Something wrong, mister?"
"Just about to ask you the same," the man said pertly. "Bank ain't in no trouble, is she?"
Very slowly, his eyes hardening, Rudy looked him over from head to foot. "The bank's not in any trouble," he said. "You trying to make some for it?"
"Me?" The man's head waggled in anxious protest. "I was just makin' talk, you know. Just joking."
"There's a law against that kind of joke," Rudy told him. "Maybe you'd better get a new one, huh?:'
The storekeeper nodded feebly. He turned and tottered into his establishment, and Rudy and the kid entered the bank.
Rudy snatched the key from the floor, and relocked the door. The kid let out a croak of amazement, one finger pointing shakily to the guard's sprawled body. "Lookit! It I-looks like he'd had a p-pencil pushed through his head."
"What are you, the coroner?" Rudy blazed. "Get his cap on! Peel out of your jacket, and put on his!"
"That fellow outside, Rudy. D-do you suppose he'll"
Torrento gave him a stinging backhanded slap. Then, as the kid reeled, he caught his lapels and yanked him up to within an inch of his face. "There's just two people you got to worry about, know what I mean? Just you and me. And you keep on playin' the jerk, there'll only be one of us." Rudy gave him a hard bearing-down shake. "You got that? Think you can remember it?"
The glaze drained out of Jackson's eyes. He nodded; spoke quite calmly. "I'm all right now, Rudy. You'll see."
He put on the guard's jacket and cap, pulling the bill low over his forehead. Then, since Rudy was afraid that the dead man might panic the other employees into hysteria, they pitched his body into the railed-off desk area and pulled a rug over it.
Back in the lobby proper again, Rudy put the kid through the final rehearsal. He wasn't supposed to peek out the door, of course. Make like he was, by rattling the shade a little, but not really do it. And when he opened the door, he wasn't to show nothing of himself but his jacket sleeve and maybe the bill of his cap.
"You don't need to sell 'em, see? They don't know anything's wrong, or if they do there's nothing we can do about it. Now-" Rudy tapped on the glass top of one of the high, marble-pedestaled customer's desks. "Now, here's the code again. Here's how you'll know it's one of the wage slaves and not some Johnnyahead-of-time wanting change for a quarter. There'll be a knock-knock-knock, like
that, see? Then a knock and another knock. Three and two."
"I get it," Jackson nodded. "I remember, Rudy."
"Some code, huh? Must have took Doc two or three minutes to figure out with a pair of binoculars. But just the three employees will use the code; they'll show between now and eight-thirty. The big cheese gets here about a quarter of, and he don't knock. Just rattles the door latch and says, 'Wingate, Wingate!'"
Rudy glanced at the clock, gestured. They took up positions on opposite sides of the door, Rudy drew his gun, and there was a knock-knock-knock, and a _knock- knock_.
The kid hesitated, freezing for a split second. Then as Rudy nodded to him, gravely encouraging, his nerve returned and he opened the door.
3
Except that she did not go to New York, did not and had never meant to get a divorce, and had in fact never for a moment entertained the slightest desire for any life other than the one she had.
Back in the beginning, perhaps, she had had some conscience-impelled notion of reforming Doc. But she could not think of that now without a downward quirk of her small mouth, a wince born more of bewilderment than embarrassment at the preposterousness of her one-time viewpoint.
Reform? Change? Why, and to what? The terms were meaningless. Doc had opened a door for her, and she had entered into, adopted and been adopted by, a new world. And it was difficult to believe now that any other had ever existed. Doc's amoral outlook had become hers. In a sense, she had become more like Doc than Doc himself. More engagingly persuasive when she chose to be. Harder when hardness seemed necessary.
Doc had teased her about this a time or two until he saw that it annoyed her. "A little more of that, "he would say, "and we'll send you back to the bookstacks." And Carol wasn't angered by his funning-it was almost impossible to be angry with Doc-neither did she appreciate it. It gave her a vague feeling of indecency, of being unfairly exposed. She had felt much the same way when her parents persisted in exhibiting one of her baby pictures; a trite display of infant nudity sprawled on a woolly white rug.